Recognition
by Fiare
Summary: You are fourteen when it begins. The erosion of your personality continues, until, eight years later, what remains cannot be recognized as you, nor can it be identified as the atrocities pacing behind your eyes. (Psychological horror.)


**I. I apologize for any historical inaccuracies or blatant violations of canon.**

** II. This is not a reader-insert story, but rather a tale written in second person. You can decide to ignore the distinction, but to preserve the original intentions, you are encouraged to read it as the latter.**

** III. The protagonist is not a specified, but one can determine that they are not Spain by process of elimination.**

* * *

It begins when you are fourteen.

You sit at your desk, one evening in late May, flipping through your history textbook out of boredom. Cicadas stridulate outside your window, and frogs provide a melody. The sunset is a serene violet shot through with brilliant tangerine, and soft classical music emanates from the neighbor's outdoor radio system. Through the strains of Mozart and amber light, a picture in black and white catches your attention. It's from a war, and, in miniscule font at the bottom, the textbook indicates which one. You know that from a project sometime in January, but that's not your focus at the moment, that is rather a peripheral thought.

The subject of the photograph, a young soldier, is not what holds your attention, either. Though the eyes gleam through sixty or seventy years of time, you are not drawn to him. Synapses connect, and you almost- _almost_- recognize something. Not him, though. Something else. You can't tell what, though, and before you are conscious of your actions, you turn the page, dreamlike, and the moment is broken.

Nothing happens for a time after that.

Sometimes there are memories or dreams that vacillate, uncertain, at the edges of your mind, and the fact that they are not yours disturbs you more than the images themselves. War, famine, rape, murder, disease, experimentation, disasters- they seep into your thoughts. One night, after a tumultuous thunderstorm and subsequent power outage, you awaken to darkness, and darkness alone. Not even a streetlight glows outside your window. For a terrified moment, you believe that the images will permeate your consciousness, unconsciousness, soul, and consume you. Seconds later, you remember your watch, and the numbers count towards two in the morning for a while.

The days continue, and the next summer arrives. You leave the country for the first time. You are excited, for while the Internet has informed you of the tepid drinks and congealed pasta, you have never been in an airplane. You are ashamed of your childish joy, but at the airport, you still remark on the variety of people and their intricate paths to your younger siblings. You even order a pretzel before takeoff, which, contrary to your expectations, in quite edible, if not delicious. For half an hour before your flight, you merely sit, enjoy your pretzel, and listen to the rapid-fire of a multitude of languages. Your recognize Greek, German, Italian, Japanese, English, French, Chinese, and, from a congregation of students in garish t-shirts, Latin. You speculate that they are attending a convention. When you pass through the boarding gates, you hand an amiable-looking man your ticket, which he scans, and returns to you with a smile.

You enter the plane, take your seat, and observe your fellow passengers with barely-concealed excitement. Your sister sits next to you, clamoring over the seats and attractions of the country that you're traveling to. Takeoff is a slightly nauseating ascent into the hazy sky. Not even that dampens your overwhelming excitement, but you mentally locate the nearest container. For the first portion of the journey, you converse with your sister, exclaiming over the guidebook, sharing a bag of chips, and commenting on a recent movie.

Then, the air circulating around the cabin becomes frigid. Vaguely, your sister asks if you're alright, but you can't respond. Your mother looks over at you, concerned, and passes you a bottle of water. Numb, you accept it.

As if some barrier in your mind is dissolving, ambiguous, crystalline structures vanish, leaving you exposed. Vulnerable. The bottle of water contacts your skin, and it is ice. You panic, and a past that you buried rushes up to meet you. Nights of battlefields and mutilated corpses.

You reassure your sister that you're fine, adjusting to the altitude.

You suppress your past, and sensation enters your fingertips again.

When you return from the trip, discomfort pulsing in each heartbeat, you vow to remain in your country for the rest of your life. When your sister suggests another trip the next summer, you cite a list of excuses, and remain at home.

When you are sixteen, you awaken one morning to a puckered scar stretching from your right shoulder blade to the middle of your back. You say nothing to your family, and when you ask the doctor about it, seven months later, she looks at you, confused, and reminds you of a bicycle accident when you were eight. You tell her that you remember. Photographic evidence, she insists, exists, but when she checks her computer, she shrugs, apologetic, and murmurs something about recent updates and corrupted files. You are silent, unconvinced.

You decide not to swim until college.

Another handful of months pass, and you, perpetually studious, are accepted into a college of your choice, within your country's borders. As you turn nineteen, surrounded by biology textbooks, you pause for a moment to reminisce on your past, ignoring the nights spent with a conflicting cacophony of whispers pervading your mind. You recall, with amusement, the history textbooks that you despised, your first flight, and dismiss them as adolescent phases.

Two weeks later, that theory of consolation is disproven. You are ill, despondent, and attribute it to sleep deprivation.

Even the food your often-absent roommate brings for you fails to entice you from your bed.

For three days, fever ravages your body. On the fourth day, you are taken to a hospital. Without sedation, the atrocities of human existence resurface. You are quiet.

On the sixth day, you return to your dormitory. On the eighth, you return to class. On the ninth, a book is left outside your door. Intrigued, you open it. Seventeen seconds later, you realize what the content is, and close it definitively. On the tenth, you reopen it.

On the eleventh, you return it to the proper owner, someone whose name is penciled in on the first page.

The days become winter, oddly temperate, and that is said to be a consequence of global warming. You travel out of the country once more, something required by a professor. You do not argue, but you are opposed. You attempt to ignore the gelid liquid that replaces the blood in your veins forty minutes after takeoff. Once, on a subway in Barcelona, someone seems to recognize you, but their voice and evident surprise are blurred into the crowd. You cross border after border on that trip, and in each country, a similar event occurs. You have a fairly ordinary appearance, you convince yourself, and remain mercifully oblivious, politely correcting the man who runs up to you, eyes glittering with unspoken salutations and nostalgia, and says, "You've changed!"

Slowly, though, afterwards, your friends begin to desert you. Communication with your sister, and your brother, now twelve, decreases. Perhaps, you contemplate, you have not changed, but you are changing.

Approximately a year later, the change is evident. You correspond with your country's leader on a regular basis, you are knowledgeable about secrets unrevealed to the government itself. You are invited aristocratic functions and to major concerts.

Exactly one year from then, a somewhat peculiar committee decides that you can address the eighty or so people who meet in the room adjacent to the one for nuclear weapons regulations at UN meetings.

You know precisely what to say to them, and, despairing, you vaguely recall one or two faces in the crowd.

Then, you remember them, and, after your introduction and address, they welcome you back.


End file.
